The Misfits in the Mountains
by K. Elisabeth
Summary: When the deformed skeletons of several children are found in the Virginia mountains, it's up to the team to put the pieces together and figure out who these special children were, where they came from, and who would want to hurt them. BB, holiday-esque.
1. Let Your Soul Gravitate

**A/N:** Oh the weather outside is frightful, and the fire is sooo delightful... and it's that time of year again! Time for another holiday fic. :) I didn't think I would be starting up another chaptered fic this semester, seeing as things have basically gone to hell on my end, but this idea came to me and with some help from Liz (who mostly nodded and said, "Yeah, that sounds good" and "Ooh that's interesting", a skill that can never be over-valued) I got the story hashed out and ready to write. I am hoping to get this done before Christmas, but we all know how good I am at estimating the amount of time it will take to finish a fic... so no guarantees. But that's my goal.

Anyway, here goes nothing. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

* * *

_People killin', people dyin'  
Children hurt and you hear them cryin'  
Can you practice what you preach?  
And would you turn the other cheek?  
Father, father, father, help us  
Send some guidance from above  
'Cause people got me got me questionin'  
Where is the love?_

_- Where is the Love?, Black Eyed Peas_

* * *

The wheels of Booth's SUV growled as they tore through the icy mud, crawling up the unpaved mountain road. Rarely did they ever use the four-wheel drive in the SUV—metropolitan D.C. isn't exactly the wild outdoors—but it was times like this that they were both grateful for the vehicle's capability. Brennan held tightly to the chilled remains of her morning coffee as the wheels squealed beneath them, Booth's white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel not comforting her any.

"I hate," he said through gritted teeth, sighing in relief as the car finally made it across the thick, slushy patch and onto solid ground again, "driving up mountains."

"It certainly is an unsettling feeling," Brennan agreed. "How far up did the officer say the bodies were found?"

"About half-way," Booth answered. "He said we'd know where to stop when we saw it. Not sure what that means."

"Rural officers never seem to be particularly specific, do they?" Brennan mused, thinking back on their past experiences with sheriffs.

"Well, these guys work out of Roanoke," Booth said. "But yeah, their main patrol is way out in the boonies, so I guess they've got that… what do you call it… _country charm_." Brennan smirked, setting her coffee back in the cup holder. Four hours ago when they left D.C. it had been full and hot, but now it was chilled and sludgy, much like the way things were outside. The leaves on the trees had long since peaked, and now the forest surrounding them was mostly grey and wintery, with swaths of pines and a few short evergreen firs interspersed among the bare maples, oaks, and birches as they traveled further up the mountainside.

They rounded a bend and finally saw some indicator of human life—a line of patrol cars parked on the side of the dirt road. Yellow police tape sectioned off a large area of woods off the side of the road, and a tall, lean redheaded officer leaned against the hood of one of the squad cars, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. Booth parked a short distance behind the line of cars and the officer nodded to the two of them when they stepped out of the SUV.

"Afternoon," the lanky man said, not bothering to pull his hands out of the warmth of his pockets. Brennan didn't blame him—at this elevation the ice hadn't melted from the ground and trees, and a dank chill hung in the air. "Or morning?"

"Almost afternoon," Booth said. "I'm Agent Booth, this is my associate, Dr. Brennan." The officer gave them another nod, turning on his heel and walking them towards the crime scene.

"Dale Emerson," he said. "Nice to meet y'all. You didn't get stuck in too much of that Black Friday traffic, did you?" He talked over his shoulder as he crossed the yellow tape, leading them into the woods.

"Not bad," Booth said. Officer Emerson nodded.

"Good," he said. "I hate draggin' you guys out here the day after Thanksgiving, but when we saw this… well, it's definitely federal."

"How did you find the remains?" Brennan asked, pulling her own windbreaker more tightly around her body as a breeze cut through the trees, rattling their limbs overhead like a somber warning of what lay ahead.

"Hikers," Emerson said. "A family came up here, said they do Thanksgiving in the woods every year. Terrible weather for it, but to each their own. Anyway, the two boys went out with their B.B. guns looking for game—illegal off the Blue Ridge Parkway, but some folks who take off the main road and camp in the deep woods bring their guns anyway, thinking nobody'll catch 'em. Anyway, the boys found the remains. Didn't realize what they were at first, thought they were deer or something 'til they saw one of the skulls."

"Yikes," Booth said, thinking back on the evening Parker found a human finger in a bird's nest. "Bet they won't go wandering off like that again." The officer chuckled.

"No, probably not," he agreed. "Poor folks were so scared, I didn't even write them up for hunting. I figured their holiday's ruined anyway, might as well not add insult to injury." After another few minutes of hiking through the brush they began to hear the voices of the officers and crime scene investigators at the scene. Brennan immediately tensed—she was always paranoid that someone was going to disturb the remains before she got there, destroying vital evidence for the case. Fortunately she seemed to have a reputation here; as soon as the investigators saw them coming, they all immediately stepped back from the concentrated area where they had been keenly staring at the ground.

"Dr. Brennan," a woman with graying brown hair said, offering Brennan her hand. "I'm Dr. Anne Kelsey, the Medical Examiner for Roanoke County. How are you?"

"Well," she said, impatient with the formalities and wanting very much to take a look at the remains.

"The remains are mainly located over here," Dr. Kelsey said, walking with Brennan to the area. "There appears to be four of five, preadolescent…"

"I'll be the judge of that, thank you," Brennan said shortly, snapping rubber gloves over her hands and crouching down in the dirt. Dr. Kelsey gave her a miffed scowl and stood behind Brennan with her hands on her hips, watching the forensic anthropologist work. After being assured that adequate photographs had been taken of the entire crime scene, she reached down and took one of the bones in her hand, gingerly lifting it from the frozen dirt.

"This is…" she said, lips curling slightly as she turned the specimen in her hands carefully.

"What?" Booth asked.

"Unique," she said.

"Okay," he said slowly. "Unique like what?"

"There was osteoclastic activity here," she pointed, "and here."

"Which means?"

"It means there was excessive bone resorption," she clarified, then made an apologetic face when she realized the clarification was just as unclear to him as her original statement. "It means the bone tissue was broken down and absorbed by the body. There was also slight osteoblastic activity here."

"Osteoblastic? Is that the opposite of osteoclastic?" Booth asked, and she nodded.

"Exactly," she said. "Excessive bony growth, an osteoblast. Also, you can see a femoral head abnormality here, coxa vara. The femoral head isn't angled the way it's supposed to be."

"So what does all that add up to?" Booth asked. She nibbled her bottom lip between her teeth as she thought for a moment.

"Probably Paget's disease of bone," she concluded. "It's thought to be caused by an inflammatory reaction to a virus, though science hasn't found the cause of it yet. It causes enlargement of the bones and deformities throughout the skeleton."

"How common is it?" Booth asked.

"In the United States? Less than one percent," she said. "And very uncommon in children, which this individual was. The epiphyseal plates at the femoral head haven't fused yet, indicating the individual was pre-adolescent, less than thirteen years of age."

"I told you that," Dr. Kelsey snipped. Brennan effectively ignored her.

"It's difficult to assess age judging by the length of the long bone, since there is so much deformity…" she continued, but Booth cut her off.

"Doesn't matter," Booth said. "Once we get x-rays done at the lab we can see if they match any missing persons in the database. Something like that will make finding a match a lot easier." Brennan nodded, bagging the femur and picking up a cranium with the mandible detached.

"This one was… also pre-adolescent," she said slowly. "Very much so. These teeth are deciduous, they're baby teeth. I would estimate age to be five or six years." A silence fell over the group of onlookers—nobody wanted to imagine that the partial skull she held in her hand once belonged to a five year old child. Without another word she bagged the cranium, and in the next bag, the mandible that went with it. They would be reunited at the lab.

"Booth," Brennan said several minutes later, after browsing over several more bones.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"All of these individuals had skeletal deformities," she said. "Every single one of them. I have yet to pick up a normal looking bone."

"What are the odds of that?" he asked seriously. She shrugged.

"I don't like to postulate statistics without an appropriate model…"

"Just guess," he sighed.

"Fine," she said. "One in a million, perhaps." He let out a low whistle.

"That makes things interesting," he said.

"That's sick, is what it is," Officer Emerson said, looking pale and angry. "Who does that to a kid? And a deformed kid, a crippled kid? That's disgusting." Booth gave a sad nod.

"Disgusting is what we do, Officer Emerson," he lamented. "I wish I could say we hadn't seen worse."

"I think this ranks pretty highly," Brennan chimed in, not bothering to look away from the unfused pieces of sacrum she held in her hands. Booth had to agree.

An hour later they had all of the remains in bags, ready to be shipped back to the Jeffersonian. Brennan was glad—her fingers were numb, her jeans were soaked through from kneeling in the slushy mud, and she felt the undeniable gnawing in her gut that came with working a case involving children. As distant and calculating as she tried to be, there was just something about working with the remains of a dead child that affected her in on a very basic, human level. If she tried to deny that, it would be denying her humanity.

When they got into the SUV Booth cranked up the heat, holding his frigid fingers in front of the vents. Brennan leaned back into her seat and shut her eyes, feeling the warm air blow against her face. Booth gave her a look out of the corner of his eye.

"You okay?" he asked. She nodded without opening her eyes.

"Yes," she said.

"Kids," he said knowingly. She nodded.

"Yeah," she said, opening her eyes and looking out the window, up into the slate grey sky. "Kids."


	2. Once They Live But Now They're Ghosts

**A/N:** I'm glad so many of you are with me on this one. :) I hope you guys know how much I appreciate the reader loyalty! This chapter is pretty info-heavy, but I tried to make it interesting and palatable. I guess you can be the judges of that. And yes, the song used in the beginning of this chapter is the song used at the end of "The Dwarf in the Dirt." Beautiful, isn't it? Anyway, enjoy the chapter and let me know what you think!

* * *

_People disappear  
Every hour and every year  
Sometimes I believe they're here, like shadows  
Like shadows..._

_Who can you trust in this place?  
In whom can I put my faith?  
If you're real then show me now  
Who you are..._

_- My Ghost, Glass Pear_

* * *

The next morning was clear and crisp, a bright winter sun illuminating the platform through the glass ceiling. Brennan relished these quiet, early weekend mornings at the lab—most of her colleagues didn't come slinking in on weekends until nine or ten, bleary-eyed and in casual attire.

The unfortunate truth of working murder investigations is that murderers never sleep, never takes vacations, and never reserve the weekends for rest and recuperation. As a result, neither do the individuals who catch them. That meant even Saturdays weren't taboo. But while the others dragged their feet grudgingly into the sterile Medico-Legal lab, Brennan came in with the sun rising behind her as she drove, clear and focused. Her natural clock roused her early, and she did some of her best work in the few precious hours before the rest of the world woke up. Everything was quiet, and still, and unfettered. Her mind could quickly and effortlessly submerge into her work, and with no outer distractions she could hold her breath and stay under for hours.

It was just after seven when she shrugged the wool pea coat off of her shoulders and unwound the scarf from her neck, warming her hands around a mug of tea as she leaned back into her desk chair momentarily, soaking in the morning. She imagined that Booth was still curled up under his comforter, his feet and back aching from the cold, occasionally peering up at the clock to see how much longer he had until the alarm went off. He was an early riser too, but not by choice—the army had drilled it into him in a very permanent way, that even years of civilian life couldn't undo. Angela, on the other hand, slept _like a rock_, whatever that phrase was supposed to mean. She had heard Booth use it many times to describe an individual who slept heavily, but she never understood the correlation between heavy sleepers and rocks. Rocks don't sleep, because they don't have brains, because they aren't sentient beings—they're rocks. She smiled and shook her head, drinking down the last of her tea before she headed out to the platform to arrange yesterday's remains.

She slipped into her lab coat and snapped a pair of clean rubber gloves on her hands, then set to work opening and sorting the bags of remains. They were mostly defleshed, and judging from a few U-shaped striated gnaw marks, the work was done by wild animals, not another human being. That was a comfort, even if only a small one—at least they weren't dealing with a cannibal.

Slowly the skeletons formed before her, each on a different exam tray. While their age was difficult to estimate from their deformed bones, it was obvious from the lack of fusion in the epiphyseal plates that they were all pre-adolescent youths. Some of them had more dentition than others, but none of them had even broken their final molars yet.

She thought back briefly on the first time she could remember going to the dentist, when she was four or five years old. The doctor was an old man with thin grey hair combed over the top of his shining head, wide square glasses and a gut that pressed up against the chair whenever he leaned over to look into her mouth. She remembered her mother standing in the corner of the room, arms crossed softly over her chest, watching with the occasional approving nod. Every time Brennan heard the sound of a tool scraping the surface of her tooth her fingers latched tightly around the arm of the chair, but she did not fight or scream or cry. She was stoic, and when they left the dentist's office she was rewarded with a milkshake.

_You were very brave, Tempe,_ her mom said to her. _I'm proud of you_.

She was startled out of reverie by the sound of the lab doors opening. His heavy footsteps gave him away even before his voice did, booming across the cavernous lab and shattering her silence like a glass ornament.

"Bones," he greeted. She smelled his coffee before she smelled him, and altogether he was a rich amalgam of roasted spice and a sweet, earthy undertone, almost like a storm.

"You're up early," she remarked.

"No I'm not, it's almost ten," he said. His lips curled up. "You did the thing you do, didn't you?"

"What 'thing' is that?" she asked, quirking a brow at him as he stood on the opposite side of the exam tables, hands stuffed in his pockets as he looked down at the remains.

"That thing, where you start working and you kind of forget about time," he elaborated. "Parker does the same thing when he plays video games, it's like he gets in the zone and he loses reality for a little while." Brennan smirked at the comparison between herself and his eight year old son.

"I might have lost myself for a little while, yes," she admitted. "But these skeletons are just so… intriguing."

"They don't look right," Booth observed, scrunching his face a little as he looked down at them.

"Well, they're still partially fleshed, but you're right, they aren't normal. They're all deformed to a degree, some more severely than others."

"What happened to this one?" Booth asked, pointing to one vertebral column that was grossly twisted.

"Severe scoliosis with mild kyphosis," she said. "The child, I believe it's a he, would have been wheelchair bound. There's no way he would have been mobile with deformation like that."

"What about the others, male or female?" Booth asked. She shrugged.

"I can't say," she said. "It's virtually impossible to determine sex on a pre-adolescent skeleton. Gender qualities in the skeleton don't begin to express themselves until the onset of puberty, somewhere between age 12 and 14. I think this individual was probably entering puberty though, because his pelvis was beginning to take on a more angular, narrow shape, characteristic of males."

"So we at least know this one was a boy?"

"Maybe," she said with heavy emphasis. "I don't feel comfortable saying that for sure, but the individual was beginning to take on some more masculine pelvic characteristics, yes. Females have wider set, more dish-shaped ilia," she said, resting her hands on her own hip bones, "while males tend to have narrower ilia with less outward flare. You can see that beginning on this skeleton."

"Sure," Booth said, eyes stuck on her hips and unable to redirect towards her face. She was a very good teacher.

"But the rest are indeterminable. Age is also difficult to estimate, because their statures cannot be accurately attained from any of their long bones. You can see on specimens one and two that the long bones are bowed, making them useless in determining stature. This skeleton, the potential male, has decent long bones but severe spinal curvature. I might be able to roughly estimate his stature, but that would, again, be a very rough estimate."

"What about three and four?" Booth asked, strongly disliking the use of numbers to refer to human victims but understanding its practical value.

"This one," Brennan said, indicating the third set of remains, "is extremely interesting. There is still a little bit of flesh on the vertebral column, but you can see the deformity clearly. There is significant calcification fusing the back and right sides of the vertebrae together."

"It looks like a melted candlestick, with wax dribbled down the sides," Booth observed, brows furrowed.

"That is actually a very accurate description," she agreed. "Add that to the evidence of bone spurs and calcification found in the joints and tendon attachment sites on this individual, and I would say that they had diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis."

"What the hell is that?" Booth asked plainly, taking another sip of his coffee.

"It's a form of degenerative arthritis that causes swelling and calcification at the joints, and also this characteristic calcification of the spinal column. Calcification means formation of calcium deposits, or bone," she explained slowly, trying not to lose him in the medical jargon. "It's not uncommon in the elderly population, but is extremely rare in children, especially progressed at this rate."

"Would it have been painful?" he asked.

"Very," she said sadly. "It limits mobility and causes swelling and bone spurs in the joints. I imagine this child was probably not very active because of the pain they were in."

"That's horrible," Booth said, shaking his head.

"I'm sure they would have been treated with appropriate medication to control the pain," Brennan said, in a way that was trying to be a comfort. He smiled softly at her attempt and nodded.

"You're right," he said. "But it still sucks. So what about four?" Brennan grinned in a way that was very unfitting for a woman examining human remains.

"Four," she said, moving to the small skeleton, "is possibly the most interesting of all, from an anthropological standpoint. The skull porosity is classic porotic hyperostosis."

"Okay… what does that mean, and why is it interesting?" he asked, wondering vaguely if there would ever come a day when he would understand her forensic anthrobabble.

"Well, porotic hyperostosis is a disease where the bone marrow, the porous area on the inside of the bone that produces red blood cells, expands in an out of control way, particularly in the cranium. The marrow actually consumes the cortical bone, the hard outside part of the bone, and replaces it with soft, marrow-producing cancellous bone."

"That's weird," Booth said.

"What's even weirder," she continued, "is that it's virtually unseen in industrialized nations. It's thought to be caused by extreme iron deficiency, so it's commonly seen in archaeological remains from groups who had little access to iron-rich foods, or in malnourished populations of individuals today."

"So the kid was malnourished?" he asked. She shook her head.

"I x-rayed the long bones, looking for Harris lines, and didn't find any," she said. "Harris lines are thin lines of growth arrest. They form after a growing child or adolescent has stopped growing for a period of time, usually due to malnourishment, then starts growing again. If the child's iron deficiency had been caused by malnourishment, there would be Harris lines on the ends of the long bones."

"So what would cause that kind of iron deficiency, then?" he asked. She pressed her lips together, thinking.

"I'm not sure," she said. "It's possible that the child had a particularly severe case of pernicious anemia, but that would be a real stretch. All I know is that this is an extremely rare find in a modern-day American child."

"That should make identifying the remains a lot easier, then," Booth said.

"Yes, it should," she said. "In fact, these disabilities will probably be the only real identifying factor in these children, since their statures, ages, and genders cannot be determined from their skeletons."

"I didn't realize kids were so tough to I.D.," Booth lamented. She nodded.

"The only way to determine age in pre-adolescents is through stature, and the way you determine stature is through the regression method, measuring the length of the long bones. If you can't measure the length of the long bones, you can't get stature, and without stature you can't determine age. Since gender is indeterminable in children, that means that these remains will be virtually unidentifiable until their skeletal pathologies are identified and matched."

"We'll be able to do that, though," Booth said assuredly. "These kids had to have gone to doctors, probably specialists, right?" She nodded. "So somewhere out there are a set of x-rays that match those kids. We'll figure out who they are."

"We will," she agreed. "It's just going to take time. When Mr. Bray arrives I am going to have him x-ray the remains and then begin the maceration process to remove the rest of the flesh from the skeleton. That should only take a day or two since there's so little flesh on them, then after a few days under the drying hood I'll be able to take a closer look at them."

"So now we can go get lunch, then?" Booth asked.

"Lunch? I haven't even had breakfast yet," she lamented. He shook his head with a grin as he placed his hand on her lower back, ushering her towards the stairs.

"We'll call it brunch, then. Whatever it is, I'm starved, and it looks like we've got some time."

"Indeed," she agreed, allowing herself to be lead away after covering the remains. "Mr. Bray usually comes in around noon on weekends, so the full set of x-rays won't even be ready until later this afternoon."

"When are you going to start calling him Wendell like everyone else?" Booth asked.

"I don't even call you by your first name, why would I call him by his?" she responded. Booth had to nod in concession—she had a point.

"You know what I don't get?" he asked a few minutes later as he helped her into her coat.

"What's that?"

"Why does it always happen so fast on TV shows?"

"Why does what happen?"

"The clean skeletons," he said. "You know, those crime shows where they have some nasty, gooey body and then in like an hour they have a perfectly clean skeleton. That's not even close to reality. We have to wait like, a week or more for the bones to get clean and dry!"

"Because it's _not_ reality, Booth," she said, wrapping the scarf around her neck. "It's entertainment, it's not meant to be an accurate portrayal of the profession. If all cop shows were accurate portrayals of what it means to be a police officer, then seventy-five percent of the program would show an officer sitting at his desk, filling out paperwork."

"I guess you're right," he said. "Still, it seems a little deceptive."

"Entertainment is deceptive," she argued. "That's the nature of the industry. Do you really think the people you see in movies are actually that flawless? It's not only an improbability, it's…"

"Okay, okay, I get it," he said, cutting her off from another rant as they stepped out into the blustery cold, inhaling the cold air sharply into his lungs. "Whatever you say."


	3. Tell You I've Set You Apart

**A/N:** I'm not sure if you were able to actually read the last chapter since it seems like the website died for the weekend shortly after I posted it. So if you weren't able to, it's there! Not much feedback due to the site downage so I don't really know what you thought about it, but hopefully you liked it and found it informative. Anyway, here's the next chapter, hopefully the site cooperates from now on. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

* * *

_I was just guessing  
At numbers and figures  
Pulling the puzzles apart_

_Questions of science  
Science and progress  
Do not speak as loud as my heart..._

_- The Scientist, Coldplay_

* * *

The pair had a hot brunch in the diner, wrapping their hands around hot coffees and discussing facets of their work while the steam rising off of hot eggs, hash browns, and Booth's sausage links warmed their faces. The cold permeated the vast glass panes at the front of the diner, chilling their usual window seats, so they'd settled for a cozy nook in the back instead.

"You know," Booth said, washing down one of his sausage links with a sip of coffee, "it makes me feel really blessed."

"Brunch?" she asked. He grinned and shook his head.

"No," he said. "Well, yeah, that too, but that's not what I meant. Seeing all those disabled kids, it makes me so grateful that Parker is healthy. We really got lucky."

"Not really," she said, and when Booth gave her a scandalized look she elaborated. "Well, I mean, it's not luck that he is a healthy child. Statistically speaking you are much more likely to have a healthy child than one with physical disabilities or chronic illness. Luck has nothing to do with it, it's a statistical probability."

"Try telling that to the parents of those kids," he said. "_Statistical probability_ or not, having a kid with problems like that could happen to anyone. There's no guarantee you're gonna have a healthy kid—anything could've gone wrong with Parker, but he's fine. You know what he's got? Allergies. The kid gets a runny nose twice a year, and we can't have cats. That's it. He's never been in the hospital since he was born, he's got no problems, he's just a healthy, happy kid. Whether you think so or not, that's a blessing."

"I didn't say it wasn't a blessing," she argued. "Just not a stroke of luck. While I disagree that Parker's good health is a blessing from an imagined God, I do agree that you both have reason to be grateful for his good health. With so many people in the world suffering from physical and mental illnesses, we should all be grateful for the health we have."

"You know, even when you're agreeing with me, you're still arguing with me," he said, suppressing laughter. "You can't just agree, can you?"

"I'm only pointing out the facts, Booth," she insisted, but she couldn't hide the upward turn tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Okay, whatever you say," he said, smiling and turning his attention back towards his plate.

"You are lucky to have him," Brennan finally said after a few minutes of silent eating. He looked up from his plate.

"I thought luck had nothing to do with it? It's, what, _statistical probability_?"

"No, to have a healthy child, that's a statistical probability," she explained. "But to have a child like Parker, that's highly unlikely. He's a very intelligent child, funny, kind. He's unlike most children his age, much more perceptive. You are lucky to have him." Booth swelled in a way that only proud fathers can, and grinned broadly.

"Thanks, Bones," he said. "You know, every parent thinks their kid is the best, but hearing it from you really means a lot."

"He's a lot like you," she said, turning her eyes down towards her empty plate. "And that has nothing to do with statistics. That is purely your influence on his development."

"You know, you influence him too," Booth said. She looked up with a puzzled look.

"Me?" she asked. He nodded, leaning back into his seat.

"Yep," he said. "Parker was never as into science as he is until you and your dad came around and got him into it. Now he's hooked. He always wants to watch Bill Nye and stuff like that now, check out kids' books about science at the library, all that. He thinks you're great, and everything you think is cool, he thinks is cool. You're a good role model for him, Bones."

"I…" she began, taken aback by the idea of being a role model for a young child. "I'm glad I can be a positive influence in his life."

"Not just a positive influence," Booth said, placing a twenty dollar bill on the table and grabbing her coat off the back of her chair, offering it out to her as she stood. "A blessing."

oOoOoOoOo

By the time they returned to the lab the rest of their cohorts had arrived, each tending to their own business. Cam was the first to greet them, decked out in a smock, gloves, and a mask as she waved from the platform.

"I was wondering when you two would be back," she said. "There isn't much flesh, but I've been trying to take what samples I can from the little remaining tissue. Surprisingly, it looks like most of it is natural chemical decomp—I've only seen evidence of scavenging on one of the bodies, no evidence of mechanical defleshing."

"That's odd," Brennan said. "I agree, I only noted evidence of scavenging on the first victim, but I assumed there would be more evidence in the flesh that simply wasn't apparent on the visible bone."

"Nope," Cam said. "No tearing, no disarticulation, nothing that would suggest these bodies were scavenged."

"Why would an animal not scavenge a body?" Booth asked. Cam made a wishy-washy expression with her face and shoulders as she dropped a small sample of flesh into a test tube.

"Well, if the flesh was already badly decomposed when the bodies were dumped, that could have deterred some animal scavengers, like foxes or bears. But rodents like rats and squirrels will usually go after even fairly decomposed remains—they've got iron guts, they can eat just about anything."

"Squirrels?" Booth asked, looking repulsed. Cam nodded.

"Oh yeah, squirrels will eat anything that sits still long enough. They're omnivorous, when plants aren't available they'll scavenge the remains of other rodents, lizards, or even dig through human food remains. Haven't you ever seen that picture of the squirrel with a whole piece of pizza?" Brennan gave her a bizarre look and cleared her throat pointedly before the conversation could continue further in that direction.

"Anyway," Cam said, seeming to remember herself, "yes, rodents can scavenge badly decomposed remains, so it's unlikely that rate of the bodies' decay at the time they were dumped has anything to do with the lack of scavenging on the other four bodies. Even if the bodies were badly decomposed before they were left at the site, there would still probably be more signs of rodent scavenging. All I'm seeing is insect activity."

"So what else would cause animals to ignore the other four bodies, and just go for the one?" Booth asked.

"Well…" Cam said, making an even wishier-washier face.

"What?" he asked.

"Embalming," she said. "When a body is embalmed it's usually injected with a variety of chemicals, including formaldehyde. Those chemicals make the flesh unappetizing to animal scavengers, because they're poisonous. Animals smell the poison in the flesh, they know it's toxic, and they don't eat it."

"Wait," Booth said, holding up a hand. "So you're telling me four of the victims were embalmed? Like, funeral embalmed?"

"I don't know for sure," Cam said. "I'm taking tissue samples now to see if there are still traces of the embalming fluid present in what little flesh we still have. When the bones are cleaned, Dr. Brennan will be able to look and see if there are any indicators on the skeleton of embalming."

"Sometimes when a body is embalmed, the needles used to inject the embalming fluids into the corpse hit the bone, leaving small impressions behind," Brennan explained to Booth. "Although with the high rate of deformity in the skeletons, it would be a stretch to find something as slight as that."

"Well if it's there, you will," Booth said with confidence. "I just want to know why in the hell four embalmed bodies were dumped in the woods, and one wasn't."

"That certainly doesn't sound like a murder," Brennan said.

"Yeah, not many murderers go through the trouble of embalming their victims," Cam cracked as she gathered all of her tissue samples on a tray. "Well, I'm going to run these and see what comes up. Hopefully we'll know tomorrow whether or not the unscavenged bodies were actually embalmed. If that's the case, Booth, then I don't think you're going to get any hits on missing persons." Cam left with the samples, and Booth brooded, cracking his knuckles as he strode around the side of the platform.

"That just doesn't make sense," he said. "How do four embalmed bodies, people who had funerals, end up dumped in the middle of the woods?"

"Perhaps we aren't dealing with murders at all," Brennan suggested. "Maybe it's just a case of grave robbery?"

"But why would a grave robber go through the trouble of loading up the bodies, driving them out to the middle of nowhere, and dumping them?"

"Destroying the evidence of the robbery?" she suggested, but he shook his head.

"It just doesn't make sense," he said. "Too much work, not enough pay-off. These are kids, what could they have been buried with that would've been of any value? I don't buy it, the grave robbing theory."

"What else is there?" Brennan asked. He shook his head and made a displeased sound.

"I don't know," he sighed, frustrated. "I guess we'll just have to wait for Cam's samples to come back and see."

"Hey," a voice called from across the lab, the tall, built blonde jogging towards them as he clipped his badge to his front pocket. "Sorry I couldn't get here sooner Dr. B, I was up with family for the holidays and you know how that is… hey Agent Booth," Wendell said, acknowledging each of them in turn. Booth nodded to him as he swiped his card, heading up to the platform where the remains were.

"Five victims, found three days ago in the woods by a family of hikers," Booth briefed him quickly as the intern looked over the remains.

"Wow…" he said, looking over the remains. "These are really… wow. You want me to get x-rays done, Dr. Brennan?"

"Please," she said. "Although Dr. Saroyan seems to believe that four of the bodies were embalmed prior to their disposal in the woods, so I don't believe we'll need to submit them to the missing persons database."

"No, but we can still use them to confirm I.D.," Booth said. "If those bodies really were embalmed, it means somebody—a doctor or a medical examiner—declared them deceased. There's got to be record of that at a hospital somewhere, and x-rays that match. I'll have my guys start turning over hospitals in the state of Virginia, looking for kids who died who might match the descriptions we've got so far."

"What about the one that isn't embalmed?" Wendell asked. "You said four of them probably were, one wasn't. Do we submit that one to missing persons?"

"Yeah," Booth said. "Although it doesn't make sense to me, why one of them wouldn't have been buried before, when the others had to have been."

"They could have been buried, Booth," Brennan said. "They just might not have been embalmed. Embalming isn't a requirement, it's just the norm as far as Western funerary customs go. Many religions like Islam, Neopaganism, and the Baha'i faith among others do not allow for the embalming of human remains. It's possible that this individual belonged to a faith that didn't believe in embalming, hence the lack of formaldehyde and other preserving chemicals in the tissue."

"So we'll search for that one, too," Booth decided. "Just in case. That's the only thing that would make sense… not that any of this makes sense, but you know, would make more sense."

"Right," Brennan agreed. "Mr. Bray, please x-ray all of the remains carefully and let me know when you're finished. Afterwards Dr. Hodgins can check the remains for particulates, and then you can proceed with maceration. There's very little remaining flesh, so the maceration and drying process should only take a few days."

"Great," Wendell said, resisting the urge to wrinkle his nose. Nobody, not even a forensic anthropologist, enjoys maceration. "Will do."


	4. If the Sun Rose Up From the West

**A/N:** Just so you know, the squirrel bit in the last chapter was a shout-out to my old roommate and good friend, Rachel. She was and still is obsessed with squirrels, and she used to come home almost every day with a story about a squirrel she'd seen. One day she told me about a squirrel she had seen carrying an entire piece of pizza. Apparently this was far from an isolated event, because we looked online and managed to find several pictures of squirrels running off with slices of pizza. If you Google it, you can see them too. So anyway, that was a little shout-out to her, because she is awesome, and so are squirrels, and so is pizza.

Anyway, enough about squirrels. Enjoy the chapter, and let me know what you think!

* * *

_Circle me and the needle moves gracefully  
Back and forth, if my heart was a compass you'd be North  
Risk it all, 'cause I'll catch you if you fall  
Wherever you go, if my heart was a house  
You'd be home..._

_- If My Heart Was a House, Owl City_

* * *

"I can do it," Hayley huffed, stretching her thin arm up towards a tantalizing branch just barely out of reach. Brennan watched amusedly as her niece struggled, tongue poking out of the side of her mouth with gritty determination. Even with cystic fibrosis she was one of the most stubborn, independent children Brennan had ever had the pleasure of knowing. And it was becoming more of a pleasure, the more time she spent with her nieces—like Parker, they had grown on her with time, and she now discovered them to be much less of a nuisance than she found most other children to be.

"Here," Russ said, picking the girl up under her arms and lifting her to the branch's height. She hung the bauble and grinned up at her step-father, who mirrored the expression. Brennan smiled too, taking another red glass orb out of the box and finding a bare branch to hang it on.

"I'm glad you decided to come help us decorate, Tempe," Russ said as Hayley rushed off, joining her sister and mother in the kitchen as a fresh batch of cookies came out of the oven. "The girls were really excited when they heard you were coming by."

"Well, I've been meaning to come and see you since you all moved closer to the city," she said. "And since today happened to be one of the few days in my schedule where I'm not working, I thought I'd take advantage of it." Russ bent down and plugged the lights into the wall, and they both stepped back and basked in the multicolored glow.

She remembered the last time she had decorated a Christmas tree with her family. She had been fifteen years old, living in Illinois with her parents and Russ. Her father always insisted on a real tree, and even though her mother complained of the daily vacuuming of pine needles Temperance still often caught her stopping by the tree and leaning her face in towards it, inhaling its rich scent. Inconvenience or not, there was nothing comparable to the smell of a freshly cut tree in the house.

Even at fifteen, Temperance was taller than her brother Russ, and she ribbed him as her father handed her the angel to place at the very top. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched proudly as his tall, lanky daughter stretched to the top of the six footer, pressing her lips together in concentration as she balanced on her tip-toes, hoping she would not fall right into the tree and bring the whole thing crashing to the ground. She didn't, and they all cheered when the angel stood upright on its own, even Russ through his brooding.

Two weeks later her parents would disappear, and soon after, so would Russ. She wouldn't ever take the tree down, and four years later when she returned to that house to collect what few belongings hadn't been stolen through broken windows and pried locks over the past years as the house stood vacant, she would see the brittle frame of what had once been a full, fragrant tree lying in the middle of the living room like a skeletonized carcass, the porcelain angel's neck snapped.

"Are you going to get that?" She snapped out of reverie and looked up at her brother, his face many years older, aglow in the rainbow lights.

"What?"

"Your phone," he said, looking pointedly at her vibrating phone sitting on the coffee table. "Aren't you going to answer it?"

"Oh, uh, yes," she said, shaking herself back into the present and taking the call, knowing who it would be without having to read off the caller ID.

"Hey," he said, something victorious ringing even in just that one word. "We've got IDs on the victims."

"Already?" she asked.

"Yep," he said. "Got a call right in the middle of Mass this morning. Charlie left me a voicemail, said our FBI guys matched all five of them to the kids' medical files. They were all patients of the same guy, Dr. Peterson, some specialist at the Carilion Clinic Children's Hospital in Roanoke."

"So I guess we're going to Roanoke?" she asked.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I already called up there, they said Peterson's getting back into town tonight, been with family out of state for the holiday weekend."

"Great," she said.

"Oh, and you were right, about the boy," he said. "He was a male, Marquis Anderson, twelve years old. Wheelchair bound."

"I see," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "You're good."

"Well, this is one of the rare moments where I wish I hadn't been correct," she admitted.

"Nobody wants to be right about something like that," Booth consoled. "But now we know for sure who they are, at least. You can look over the files when you get to the lab if you want, but the FBI techs are pretty positive."

"With such distinct skeletal abnormalities, it would be very difficult to inaccurately match those scans," she said.

"True," he said. "I think even Parker could figure that one out. Anyway, I'll let you go, tell Russ and everyone I said hey."

"I will," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow." They exchanged goodbyes and she hung up the phone, just in time to be harassed by her younger niece.

"Is that your boyfriend?" she asked in a sing-song voice.

"No," Brennan said plainly. Russ tried to suppress a grin.

"Daddy said he is," Emma said matter-of-factly, taking a seat on the couch with two cookies wrapped in a napkin in her hand. Brennan shot Russ a look.

"Russ!"

"What?" he asked innocently. "What exactly do you call that? _I'll see you tomorrow,_" he crooned mockingly. She shot him a steely look.

"I was simply stating a fact; I will be seeing him tomorrow. We work together, Russ. That's what you do when you work with someone—you see them on work days."

"And work nights," he said. "And weekends. And holidays. And…"

"You've made your point," Brennan said through gritted teeth. Russ shot her a very brotherly grin, and she shook her head, unable to wipe the creeping smile off of her own face as she stared pointedly down at the phone in her hands, reflection of the tree lights glimmering on the blank screen.

oOoOoOoOo

The next morning he honked the horn of his SUV incessantly outside her apartment complex at six o'clock on the dot, no doubt earning the loathing of every neighbor she had in the building. When she finally emerged from the building she looked harried and cold, cheeks pink and sweater peeking out from beneath the wool coat atop it.

"The heat in my building is out," she explained as she scooted towards the warm air pouring out of the vents, holding her gloved hands up to them. Booth made a face as he offered her one of the piping coffees resting between their seats. She took it with a grateful nod and sipped.

"You should've called me, you could have stayed at my…" he began, but stopped and abruptly changed the subject. "So how's your brother and his family settling into their new place?"

"They're doing well," Brennan said. "Now that Russ is officially off of parole he was able to get a job closer to the city—better pay, nicer neighborhood."

"That's great," Booth said.

"Yeah," she said, thinking back to the previous afternoon's conversation and taking another sip of coffee. "It is nice, having them close by. Have you heard from Jarred recently?"

"A few weeks ago," he said. "He called me from some deli in Chittagong, just wanted to tell me he was okay."

"Chittagong, as in Chittagong, Bangladesh? I thought he was going to India," she said.

"Well apparently India turned into Nepal, which turned into Bangladesh. But hey, he's having a good time, so what the hell does it matter where he ends up?"

"As long as it isn't in jail," she said, and Booth nodded his agreement.

"Definitely," he said. "I think this whole thing has been good for him. He sounded good on the phone, happy. A lot happier than he's sounded in a while. He said he's been digging wells and stuff with relief groups. Imagine Jarred out there in the middle of rural Asia, digging a well." Booth chuckled to himself at the thought.

"Humanitarian work can be quite an eye-opener," Brennan said. "When I was recovering genocide victims in Bosnia, our team had a few free days away from the morgue, and some of us would volunteer with humanitarian efforts in the area on those days. It was nice to do something for someone who was still alive." He hummed an agreement and they both fell silent for a while, listening to the gentle drone of the tires on the highway as they sped away from the rising eastern sun, towards Roanoke.

oOoOoOoOo

They reached the bustling Virginia city shortly after ten that morning, the sun obscured by low clouds that threatened sleet. The seemingly endless blanket of grey reflected off of the broad glass panes of the Carilion Clinic, a sleek, modern building squeezed into the middle of everything. They were directed through a maze of elevators and wide, sterile white hallways until they found their way into the portion of the clinic dubbed the Children's Hospital. It was what a pediatric ward should be—colorful, bright, with no reflection of the horrors its walls bore witness to. If walls could speak, these would cry.

They finally found the solid oak door with the brass nameplate screwed into the front: Dr. James Peterson, M.D. Booth rapped on the door and they heard a clear, calm voice beckon them inside.

"Dr. Peterson?" Booth asked to the back of a salt-and-pepper head, just visible over the back of a tall leather desk chair. The man spun around and nodded, clasping his hands together.

"That's me," he said, standing and offering Booth his hand. His face was broad and friendly, ruddy cheeks making the greenness of his eyes even more apparent. "James Peterson. How can I help you?"

"Special Agent Seeley Booth," he said, flashing his badge. "This is my associate, Dr. Temperance Brennan."

"I see," the doctor said, pulling two chairs over from the far wall. "Please, sit down. I was told I might be seeing someone from the FBI in the next few days. Excuse the mess," he said, motioning towards his desk which was overflowing with stacks of manila folders. "I've been out of town for a week, and kids don't stop getting sick just because it's Thanksgiving."

"Right," Booth said, taking the chair he was offered. "Dr. Peterson, we recently discovered the remains of five children who were once patients of yours here. We were wondering if you could confirm that." Booth handed him the folder containing the x-rays provided to them by the hospital, and the doctor flipped through each one individually.

"Marquis Anderson… Kasey Miller… Cheyenne Dart… James Ackerly… and A'mal Fadwah," he said, listing off each one without even having to look at the names attached to the edge of the scans. "Yes, these were all patients of mine." He handed the scans back to Booth, looking disturbed. "You said their bodies were found where?"

"Dumped in the woods, a few miles off the Blue Ridge Parkway," Booth said.

"That's… how?" the doctor asked. "How could that happen? They were buried, I was there, I went to their funerals. Every one of them. I saw… I saw them get put into the ground. How did they end up out there?"

"So they were buried?" Brennan asked, and the doctor nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "They all passed away from various complications, over the past year or so."

"What kind of complications?" Booth asked.

"Different things," Dr. Peterson said. "Kasey, she had the porotic hyperostosis, we were treating her with shots of cyanocobalamin every couple of weeks to keep her B12 levels up. She had severe atrophic gastritis, autoimmune, type A. All of her stomach lining basically turned into scar tissue. She could hardly absorb anything, ended up with the worst case of pernicious anemia I've ever seen. Even with a feeding tube straight into her intestines she still couldn't absorb enough iron to fight the anemia, so we were giving her the cyanocobalamin injections to treat it. But for some reason she stopped responding to them, and we couldn't get her cells to saturate with enough oxygen to feed her brain. She died."

"You have no idea why she stopped responding to the treatment?" Brennan asked. Dr. Peterson shook his head.

"None," he said. "There were allegations filed against the facility Kasey's family was staying at, that they didn't administer the injections properly, that they neglected her health care."

"What facility is that?" Booth asked.

"Helping Hands," the doctor said. "It's a little place about ten miles outside of the city, near the mountain ridge, beautiful location. They're a non-profit that opened up about ten or fifteen years ago I guess. The Ronald McDonald House here was totally inundated, they just didn't have space for all the families of children being treated here, so a few folks started up Helping Hands to take in the families that the Ronald McDonald House couldn't. Now they focus mostly on chronically ill kids who don't have to be at the hospital every day, but are here a lot for follow-ups, testing, stuff like that."

"Were any of the other children staying at Helping Hands?" Booth asked. Dr. Peterson nodded.

"Actually, I think they all did at one point or another," he said. "They all fit into the 'chronically ill' category, were here a lot for treatment and research. I specialize in pediatric genetic and pathological skeletal disorders, and most of my patients agree to be part of case studies for their conditions. That brings them here a lot, so Helping Hands was a great resource for them."

"Did any of the parents ever complain about the staff or the accommodations at Helping Hands?" Booth asked. The doctor shook his head.

"Never," he said. "Everyone loved it out there—the parents, the kids, everyone. Never heard a bad word about 'em until they started getting sued in these wrongful death cases."

"Do you think the care the children received may have attributed to their deaths?" Brennan asked. The doctor shrugged.

"Honestly, I don't know," he said. "When you work with sick kids, really sick ones, you're used to them dying. I know that sounds harsh, but there are a lot of patients I don't see into their teens. That's why I decided a few years ago to specialize in skeletal disorders—they don't usually kill, even if they are disabling. That's why it was so odd that within a year, I lost five of my specialty patients. I just didn't see it coming, they all seemed pretty stable."

"We appreciate your help," Booth said, rising from his chair. Brennan followed suit. "I'm going to need for you to fax all of their medical files over to us—everything, every scan and nurse's note you've got on them." The doctor nodded.

"Absolutely," he said. "Whatever you want, it's yours."

"I'll also need a list of all the nurses, physical therapists, anyone who would've worked with the kids," Booth said. Dr. Peterson continued to nod as he lead them to the door.

"It'll be there before you even get back," he said. "The idea of someone doing something to hurt those kids just turns my stomach, I can't even imagine it. Anything I can do to help y'all with the case, I'm more than happy to."

"Thank you," Booth said. "We'll be in touch." They left the pediatric wing in silence, and it wasn't until they were standing in the elevator that Brennan spoke.

"That explains why one of the bodies wasn't embalmed," she said, seemingly out of nowhere.

"What does?" he asked.

"Fadwah," Brennan said. "A'mal Fadwah, that's the name of number one, the one body that wasn't embalmed. Her name is very Middle Eastern; odds are that her family is Muslim. Islam forbids embalming—bodies are to be dressed appropriately and buried preferably within twenty-four hours of death, facing Mecca." Booth made an 'o' shape with his mouth.

"Interesting," he said. Brennan nodded and pulled her phone out of her pocket, dialing a number quickly.

"Mr. Bray?" she said when the other line picked up. "It's Dr. Brennan. Have the remains of our first victim been placed in the drying hood yet?" She paused, waiting for his answer. "Alright. I need you to turn the skull so that it's facing east. I believe east is the wall across from the door. Yes, thank you." She hung up the phone, and Booth gave her a puzzled look.

"East?" he asked.

"Mecca," she said. "In North America, in order to face Mecca you must face east. It would be disrespectful to orient her remains away from Mecca if she was indeed a Muslim." Booth gave her a soft sort of look that was caught between a smile and a sigh.

"You're something else," he finally said.

"I don't know what that means," she said. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder as they stepped out of the hospital and into the blustery cold parking lot, hearing the sound of sleet pounding the ground outside. He laughed and shook his head, squeezing her upper arm.

"I know."


End file.
